As semiconductor technologies evolve, greater amounts of functionality can be incorporated on a single semiconductor die. Whereas formerly separate integrated circuits may have been present to provide different functions such as processing functions, control functions, interface functions and so forth, modern semiconductors can incorporate multiple functions such as these in a single integrated circuit.
Evidence of this trend is the increasing number of system-on-a-chip (SoC) devices that are available. These single die integrated circuits (ICs) include various circuitry such as processing circuitry, interface circuitry, specialized function circuitry and so forth. As such, embedded devices and portable devices such as mobile terminals, netbooks and so forth can be implemented with a smaller number of devices. This trend is also apparent in processor technologies, as modern processors can include multiple cores in a single package, e.g., dual-core, quad-core and many-core implementations are readily available. In general, SoCs include a single core processor, which can provide a limitation on their utility.